Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Qwen3.8 27B (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Qwen3.8 27B (Low) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 27B (Low) scores 1.9 points higher (26.2 vs 24.3) but costs 1.6× as much to run the benchmark ($1060 vs $653; both premium class). Pick Qwen3.8 27B (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Qwen3.8 27B (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 26.2 | +7.8% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 7.8% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $1,060.08 | +62.4% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 62.4% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.14s | 55.56s | +507.9% Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is 507.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Qwen3.8 27B (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 7.8% more intelligence, 62.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 507.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Qwen3.8 27B (Low)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/qwen3-8-27b-low · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-low/qwen3-8-27b-low?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill